Booking a place in history

Both libraries and museums have old – even surprisingly old – roots. Yet for institutions so valued and embedded in our communities, they are surprisingly young, too.

The opening of the Southwark Heritage Centre and Walworth Library marks the third new library to open in Southwark over the past five years – alongside Camberwell in 2015 and Grove Vale in 2019 – and the restoration of the borough’s museum artefacts to public display since the Walworth Old Town Hall fire in 2013.

Early libraries in the Middle Ages focussed on handwriting new copies of texts. In Europe, booksellers in university towns like Paris, Oxford, or St Andrews loaned textbooks. Students would borrow a section of a book for a fee, copy it for themselves, and then return it.

Book and object collecting – the latter often in a so-called “cabinet of curiosities” – was a popular pastime for relatively wealthy people interested in science in the 17th and 18th centuries. Some of these people, like John Tradescant or Hans Sloane, opened their collections to the public as the earliest ancestors of modern museums.

Closer to home, 18th century Walworth, then a fashionable residential area full of Georgian terraces much like Bloomsbury today, was the home of a pair of significant collectors: Richard Cuming (1777-1870) and his son Henry Syer Cuming (1817-1902). Richard grew up in a house in Dean’s Row. He started his collection at the age of five, when an aunt gave him three fossils and a coin from Mughal India. You can see the cabinet he built, aged 14, for his mineral collection in the Heritage Centre. As an adult, he continued collecting after moving to 63 Kennington Road, where Henry was born. He inherited his father’s passion for collecting, and also compiled the first catalogue for the collection.

Richard was interested in science, especially geology and animals, and this focus showed not only in his membership of the Chemical Society of London but also in the items he purchased when the Leverian Museum, one of South London’s earliest, closed in 1806. However, he eventually concentrated on what he called “artificial curiosities” (or ethnographic collections) items that reflect the everyday life and culture of different communities around the world. Henry was also interested in ethnography, but also turned his study to his own culture – South London - especially local archaeology, folklore, and everyday life, collecting tickets, letters, flyers, adverts – and even the paper bags the baker packed his rolls in.

In Richard Cuming’s time, libraries were relatively exclusive. Some were subscription schemes set up by scholarly societies like the Chemical Society, or mechanics’ institutes that brought learning to working people. These libraries had a heavy focus on non-fiction. Others were for-profit businesses, a development of booksellers loaning out extra copies; these libraries had lots of fiction, drawing condemnation from reformers who thought novels were bad for moral education.

By the 1830s, industrialisation, the expansion of education, and the reforming zeal of the Chartist movement meant that working people had more free time than in previous decades. Middle-class campaigners wanted them to have morally uplifting alternatives to the pub to spend that free time. Campaigner Francis Place suggested that parishes should provide free libraries, reading rooms, and lectures on entertaining and educational topics. Eventually this led to the Museums Act of 1845 and the Libraries Act of 1850, which allowed local authorities with populations over 10,000 to fund local libraries and museums through specific taxes.

London was slow to adopt the Act; by 1860 London had only two public libraries, both in Westminster. In many parishes, the question was repeatedly raised, to raucous debate, and defeated. Camberwell, for instance, debated and rejected a tax for libraries in 1858, 1866 and 1879, when it lost by more than 2 to 1, and was defeated in every ward.

Bermondsey parish was the first to pass the Library and Museum Acts in 1887, followed closely by Rotherhithe. Camberwell finally adopted the Acts in 1889, after George Livesey, the chair of the South Metropolitan Gas Company, offered to build the parish a library if they did. Dulwich and Newington both adopted the Acts in 1890, followed by St Saviours in 1891 and later St George the Martyr in 1896. However, the tax money local government could raise via the Acts was nowhere near enough to build, furnish and stock new libraries so public donations of both money and books were essential.

John Passmore Edwards, a journalist and newspaper owner, spent the last 20 years of his life building hospitals, orphanages, convalescent homes, schools, museums, art galleries, public libraries and even drinking fountains throughout London. Twenty-five of these buildings were libraries.

Passmore Edwards lived in Camberwell Grove until the 1870s, when his home was compulsorily purchased for railway expansion. Perhaps because of this, three of Camberwell’s libraries were Passmore Edwards builds: Nunhead (1896), Dulwich (1897), and Wells Way (1901, now in Burgess Park and home to Lynn AC and Groundworks). St George the Martyr parish Passmore Edwards library, on Borough Road opened in 1898 – it is now London South Bank University’s Passmore Centre. Nunhead Library’s foundation stone has the motto, “Good deeds live on when doers are no more.”

This is definitely true for the borough’s historic libraries: their donors may be gone, their use may be different, but they still serve the communities of Southwark.

Repairs all sewn up

Lawratu Patton has worked in housing repairs at Southwark Council for eleven years, but her nifty needlework recently gained her a place on popular BBC TV programme The Great British Sewing Bee. Here she talks Southwark and sewing.

What inspired you to start sewing?

My inspiration to start sewing came from shop-bought clothes not fitting me the way I liked. I love my body the way it is, so for me it is much better to make the clothes fit me, rather than to try and make my body fit the clothes.

What’s it like taking part in reality TV?

It was a fun process! It was interesting to see how much work goes into producing an episode, I will never watch the show in quite the same way ever again!

Which piece of sewing are you most proud of?

I’m proud of all my makes. I like to challenge myself when sewing, and I am always looking for different things to make and different techniques to try.

What’s more challenging – solving repairs or making clothes?

of work to get there. With making clothes, I can always put it to one side if I find it challenging. I cannot, and would not, with repairs so I need to power on through even when things are difficult.

What happens in your working day usually?

It’s quite varied, dealing with complaints, compliments and other queries. The best bit is when I get things resolved and I can make residents happy.

If you could solve one housing issue, what would it be?

Ooh that’s a tough one. I think one of the biggest problems is not enough housing stock.

What do you love most about Southwark?

Southwark is so diverse and home to so many cultures, I love how you can be exposed to so much of the world in one borough. Although there are many places I love, the best has to be my mum’s.